Benedict Spinoza is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls “the rule of multitude,” that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza’s multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that is found in (...) the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for being-affected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza’s emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or “the power of the multitude”—a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature. (shrink)

It has often been said that the Zhuangzi 莊子 advocates political abstention, and that its putative skepticism prevents it from contributing in any meaningful way to political thinking: at best the Zhuangzi espouses a sort of anarchism, at worst it is “the night in which all cows are black,” a stance that one scholar has charged is ultimately immoral. This article tracks possible political allusions within the text, and, by reading these against details of social, political, and historical context, sheds (...) light on another strand of the Zhuangzi—one that questions prevailing normative values because it is fiercely critical of scholarly complicity with violent imperial territorial consolidation. (shrink)

The recent ‘material turn’ focuses on materiality in two distinctive ways: one, by including nonhuman agencies, another, by mining indigenous knowledges for alternative conceptions of agency and human–thing relations. A troubling gap persists between the two endeavours. The gap insinuates an us–them dichotomy and, more importantly, curtails communication between radically different visions of thingly agency – thereby impeding the political drive of these conceptual enterprises. This article is an essay in cross-cultural transposition. Through a close reading of a story of (...) a useless tree in an ancient proto-Daoist text, Zhuangzi, the author shows how its fabulist and oneiric form illuminates a distinctive perspective on uselessness. Conversely, the trope of uselessness lets us begin from what she calls a ‘situated affectivity’ amidst more-than-human materialities. The article concludes with a brief comparison of three modalities of uselessness from different ‘cosmologies’ of thought – a foretaste of the potentials of cross-cosmological endeavours. (shrink)

This exploratory qualitative study investigated how doctoral students reported their personal and professional interaction experiences that they believed might facilitate or impede their academic pursuits in biomedical research. We collected 19 in-depth interviews with doctoral students in biomedical research from eight universities, and we based our qualitative analytic approach on the work of Miles and Huberman. The results indicated that among different sources and types of interaction, academic and emotional interactions from family and teachers in various stages essentially affected students’ (...) persistence in the biomedical science field. In addition, co-mentorship among peers, departmental environment, and volunteer experiences were other essential factors. This study also found related experiences among women and underrepresented minority students that were important to their academic pursuit. (shrink)

Insect molting is elicited by a class of polyhydroxylated steroids, ecdysteroids, that originate in the prothoracic glands. Ecdysteroid synthesis in the prothoracic glands is controlled in large measure by a peptide hormone from the brain, prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH), which exists in two forms and is released into the general circulation as a result of environmental and developmental cues. The means by which PTTH activates the prothoracic glands has been examined at the cellular level and the data reveal the involvement of (...) cAMP, calcium, calmodulin, cAMP‐dependent protein kinase and the ultimate phosphorylation of a 34 kDa protein tentatively identified as ribosomal protein S6. (shrink)

We describe here recent work on the molecular genetics of mitosis in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans. Aspergillus is one of three simple eukaryotes with powerful genetic systems that have been used to analyze mitosis. The modern molecular biological techniques available with this organism have made it possible to use mutations to identify genes and proteins that play an important role in mitosis. Three Aspergillus genes that affect mitosis are described. One gene, nimA, is specifically expressed late in the cell (...) cycle and codes for a putative protein kinase that induces mitosis, even in cells blocked in S‐phase. The second gene, bimG, codes for a putative phosphatase that interacts functionally with the nimA kinase. The third gene, bimE, codes for a protein that suppresses mitosis during interphase, apparently by keeping nimA turned off. None of these genes appear to be similar to any of the genes affecting mitosis that have been characterized in other eukaryotes, but rather appear to be elements of a system that prevents mitosis from occurring during interphase. (shrink)

With the rise of naturalism in the art of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance there developed an extensive and diverse literature about art which helped to explain, justify and shape its new aims. In this book, David Summers provides an investigation of the philosophical and psychological notions invoked in this new theory and criticism. From a thorough examination of the sources, he shows how the medieval language of mental discourse derived from an understanding of classical thought.

In L. Frank Baum's story, Ozma of Oz, which is a sequel to Baum's much more famous story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and her companion come upon a wound-down mechanical man bearing a label on which are printed the following words: Smith and Tinker's Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating Perfect-Talking MECHANICAL MAN Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live As Dorothy and her companion are made to discover when they wind (...) up this man, he is indeed capable of doing all the things of which his label boasts—acting, speaking and even thinking. But as Tik-Tok himself insists, and no one in the story casts doubt on the matter, he is not alive. (shrink)

An outline of the life of Heraclides and his fragmentary writings (on the theory of matter, astronomy, ethical and religious topics) is followed by an attempt to reconstruct his thought. He emerges as not so much a profound thinker as a many-sided writer of considerable literary gifts and occasional flashes of brilliance.

(1997). The fly in the ointment: A study of relativism in MacIntyre and Goodman as applied to innocence and guilt in Kafka's the trial. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 609-614.

Rabindranath Tagore is remembered today chiefly as a poet, and his fame as a poet has often eclipsed his great contributions to other fields of literature and life — especially education. Tagore pondered deeply on the fundamental problems of education — aims, curriculum, method, discipline, values and medium — and wrote and experimented on them freely and extensively. Tagore is perhaps the only literary genius in contemporary history who devoted a major part of his life to thinking about education and (...) creating an educational institution of international significance. Also, the institution he created at Santiniketan proved to be the most global and sustainable among the progressive educational institutions launched by individual thinkers such as Froebel and Russell. This edition revives a classic work, the first comprehensive, full-length account of Tagore’s educational thought and activity, commemorating his 150th birth anniversary. It presents a detailed chronological survey of Tagore’s educational writings and institutional activities in the perspective of his life and thought in general. The book also contains a detailed review and critical discussion on almost all major aspects of his educational work. Through an overall evaluation of Tagore’s unique contribution to education and his message to the world, it seeks to correct some common misconceptions that have existed from time to time about Santiniketan and Visva-Bharati. The book will help form a more complete view of Tagore’s life and work, filling as it does the gaps and voids in the literature that has grown around him, and reinforcing its relevance today. It will be of value to educationists, teachers, policymakers, those interested in modern Indian history and philosophy of education._ _. (shrink)

It is proposed in this paper to develop a method by which the most general problem of the algebra of propositions is solved. This problem is to construct all propositions whose truth is independent of the form of the variables. As might be expected this method will enable us to determine without the use of matrices the consistency and independence of propositions, except in the case of those fundamental properties, which taken together define consistency itself. In the discussion which follows (...) no limitations are placed on the meaning of the terms and the word proposition is used simply in the sense of a variable. If we were to say, for example, that our variables must be restricted to zero or one values, we would be introducing a limitation which would reduce the generality of our science. A logic may be false in the sense that its postulates lead to contradictory theorems, or it may be false in the sense that it lacks generality, and the situation is not saved by calling it a two-valued, or a three-valued logic, or a logic of “propositions,” or by designating it by some other euphuism. (shrink)